34 - Dana Sacco and Bootstrapping Your Publishing Career with AI Tools

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, we sit down with Dana Sacco, a businesswoman-turned-author who has mastered the art of bootstrapping her publishing career using AI tools. Dana shares how she transitioned from being an avid reader to a multi-genre author, all while leveraging affordable and innovative AI solutions like ChatGPT, Claude, and Ideogram to streamline her workflow. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

**Steph Pajonas:** Hello everyone, and welcome to an episode of Brave New Bookshelf. I'm Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach you how to use AI in any part of your process. Coming up on the middle of March here. And I'm really excited about the fact that warm weather is on the horizon. We were just talking about that off screen before we started recording because we all love the warmth and we're missing it right now.

I'm going to let you all know that this episode's going to go out around March 13th or so, and then we're gonna take a week off because Danica and I will be in New Orleans, hopefully enjoying some warmer weather if we're lucky. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. Hopefully because last time we were there, the first day was [00:01:00] warm, but then the day we spent together hanging out, it was cold.

**Steph Pajonas:** It was cold. We did that whole hop on, hop off bus thing and we were like extra things around us because it was cold. 

**Danica Favorite:** No. Cold. Yeah. Yeah. We were just talking to Dana about that. Just she's in Florida. I'm in Colorado. Steph is in New Jersey. Steph and I are freezing and Dana's like, you people are crazy.

And I kind of agree with Dana, so 

**Steph Pajonas:** I agree. I agree. So, I'm handing off to Danica besides being freezing. How are you? 

**Danica Favorite:** I am good. So I'm Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors at all stages of their publishing journey from getting the perfect book description of metadata to distributing their books to then splitting royalties at the very end.

We have you covered And I'm gonna just give a little bit longer plug for Publish Drive is that we were victim to our Facebook ads account being disabled. I love it when the bigger [00:02:00] companies mess with your plans. So, yeah, give Publish Drive a little love because you have no recourse, right? It's just wait for Facebook to get back to you. 

So, when I invited Dana to be a guest, she's like, why do you want me?

And I was like, oh my goodness, Dana, you are such a great guest. So I met Dana, gosh, probably what, a year ago? Probably, maybe a little longer. But she's good friends with our friend Jill Cooper, who was on the podcast before. And I first met Dana because she has a service called Whale Reader. 

So Dana is not an author, although she is an author, but she doesn't have the background of an author. She had the background of a reader, and so what she was doing is for a fee, she would read your book and as a reader, give you insights about what a reader experience with your book is. And I thought that was so cool and so powerful because she doesn't know all the authory stuff we do. 

Dana's background is in business. She's created a whole bunch of [00:03:00] businesses. She's done some really great business coaching. She's written some really cool business books and some cool AI business type books for marketing. And then she decided to give writing with AI a whirl. And she's out there kicking butt and taking names, I'll tell you.

And she's doing all these cool things that we as authors don't think of. Instead, she's doing what a business person would do. And I think that is something that we as authors really need to learn and really need to do because we're so busy thinking like an author, we forget to think like a business.

And so, here is Dana Sacco. I am going to let Dana tell us more about herself and what she does, and I'm really excited to have her today. 

**Dana Sacco:** Thank you. We'll discuss you forcing me into this at a later date. I'm Dana Sacco I now write a whole bunch of different genres depending on my mood.

Let me tell you a little bit about my [00:04:00] background. I have been in computers since before I was 20. We'll just say that number. So it's been quite a few years and I've owned computer stores. I was hard coding websites. I have done all of this stuff beforehand. However, with every business that we had, we had to market and that was where I thrived.

I absolutely loved doing the marketing for any type of business because you're looking at things a little bit differently than everyone else and. I don't like to spend money if I don't want to. So in our businesses, our big thing was back when we owned a computer store, it was all word of mouth. And if anyone go wants to go back in time, it was distributing flyers on houses.

You put in some printed garbage thing that half the people would throw away, but maybe one or two people might show up. The Yellow Pages, those type of things. We actually had that and people did look us up. But then [00:05:00] I have designed webpages. I have helped other businesses with their systems and their automations.

That is actually the business I retired from a little bit over a year ago. And that's actually how I met Jill Cooper was when we were in the same marketing coaching program for marketing our businesses online. We met first actually in person, so that was actually a lot of fun.

I didn't expect to author any books. I will say that right now, I never expected to. I never wanted to. It was not one of those things that, according to my husband, he said he thought I would. Because of the number of books I read per year, I do read over 300 books a year. And that does not include my books. I don't read my books except for when I'm going through 'em.

But I love all genres. I read all genres. I read everything from the young adult sappy things on up to everyone needs to be offed at some point with one man standing, [00:06:00] those type of things. I read 'em all. And so they're all also in my head. 

This past summer, believe it or not. I actually just started writing fictional books in June June, July, somewhere around there. Because I was in a situation where I was bored. My husband had a medical issue and we couldn't do anything. We physically could not do anything. And I have a dog who wakes me up at three o'clock in the morning every day to go outside. When you wake up and you have to go outside, at that point your brain's starting to work.

And so I needed something to do. I do the Wordle, I do all of those things, and then I'm done. That takes me 10 minutes and I'm having coffee, and then what do you do? And so I started playing around a little bit with AI. Now I had already at this point written three or four books on using AI to market your business when AI first came out.

They are not updated. but the process is still the same. [00:07:00] But they're definitely not updated to the new things that you can do with it, which is just amazing. But I absolutely love the whole with an automated brain and how my brain works. If you think of a flow chart, that's what I'm thinking. When people talk to me and they would discuss their business with me, I'm seeing their business as a flow chart. Pieces and parts, and you see a lot of people with sticky notes all over the place. And that drives me nuts. I can't do that. It is step by step and this step might go over here. It's the same way in a book. 

So what I started doing was just taking some of the thought processes that are in my head that come to you. A book idea never comes in the middle of the day. It shows up at one o'clock in the morning and usually wakes you up. There might have been a drink or two beforehand that might have caused this, but I started arguing with Chat GPT about how to make the book work.

And I do argue with it. We have a very back and forth [00:08:00] relationship, and I do consider it a relationship because from when I started. Using it a couple years ago to now. It's learned everything. It's learned so much about me and how I want everything. That, to me, it's amazing. I'm like, yes, I have someone that I can back and forth with and I absolutely do back and forth with chat and it's elevated from there. 

I went into the group AI for authors. I think I actually have been in there for over a year and I just sat there and looked. I just wanted to see what you guys were doing. And what was amazing to me is one of my favorite authors Actually I found in the group, and apparently she'd been using AI and I'd read her books and I had no clue that they were AI. Here's someone who is, using AI on a daily basis to do everything from planning my groceries to figuring out a recipe for the only things that are in my fridge to arguing back and forth with it. So I know how it talks, but I couldn't tell. [00:09:00] So I'm like, that's kind of cool. 

So then when I was in a situation where I got bored, I started taking the ideas that were showing up in my head and I do have an entire list on my phone of ideas and only one of them's written. And started plotting 'em out and coming up.

And then I learned that there's Claude. I'm like, Ooh, let's play with Claude's. Nice. And I had a lot of fun with Claude, so some of my first books they really do need to be reedited. 

And I've gone from one to the next, and then I learned that, hey, I can use AI to do voices. I didn't like the fact that the technology moves too fast in any type of computer situation that to be confined within ACX for seven years as a contract, even though I really wanted that voice that I heard. I really loved her voice, but I couldn't. It would've cost me close to six hours. You're talking $2,000 for me to have the rights to it. And if I did ACX, I've got a seven year [00:10:00] commitment. Look at where technology has gone just in the last year. So then I learned other different places that I could use. I actually have some on Revoicer. They're not my favorite, but I do use them for a serial book. When Vella was out, I have one that's a serial and we're into season three, just ended.

And they're all on YouTube because I didn't know other places might take AI and then I found out Google Play is there. And so I have some now on Google Play, which then could go over to Findaway and I could put them everywhere, plus I could put them on YouTube.

And there is 11 labs, which I absolutely love their voices, but that's one book a month for a hundred dollars. It hurts me on that one. But then I have one series that needs to have at least a little bit better quality but I found that people don't care.

I'm very open. People ask me a lot of times they're like, are you telling people you have? I'm like, it's in my description that I use AI voices. Some of them, it tells you which voice I use. On all of my [00:11:00] audio books. It says that it's an AI narrated by whatever service I used on the little covers that I make.

So it's from everything from arguing with Chat GPT to the whole process of what I'm going to use it with and what the topics are that I want to. The end result, it's 95% AI done. I'm very open about it. 

**Steph Pajonas:** You might as well be right. I've thought about this a lot too. I'm pretty open about my AI use on Facebook.

I am open about it on my blog. I am open about it pretty much everywhere. I don't put it in my book descriptions on Amazon. I just, yeah, eh, why bother? Right. It's like I, I don't see the point of doing that, honestly. But if they click through to my website, they'll just find out right there.

Right, right. But I love the fact that you have evolved your writing to fit this new paradigm of being able to have AI at your fingertips. At any time you [00:12:00] can have a conversation with it. You can go ahead and argue with it and make sure that you get everything you need for your story.

And then it becomes part of the post-production process too. Making an audio book, sticking in on YouTube, working towards monetization. Have you been monetized yet? I know you've been working towards it. 

**Dana Sacco:** No, I'm at 804 subscribers right now, so I'm like so close. So close. And I'm fi I'm finding that rhythm.

And I think that this is interesting 'cause I'm trying to figure out, and I'm reading the analytics because I have written different genres. 

So I have the cute snow globe things. I have paranormal romcoms. The spicy ones aren't on there and that author name isn't gonna be mentioned.

I have some regular contemporary romance sports ones and I have cozy mysteries and paranormal cozy mysteries. And so it's a little bit of everything. A lot of it's the stuff that I read the most because those are the voices I hear in my head. And it is the voices I [00:13:00] hear in my head.

They need to go out, they need to go somewhere else other than in me. ' cause I think I have really cool voices in my head and someone else needs to hear 'em. But it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And it is, it's everything from arguing with it up to doing pictures. My covers are done with ideogram and editing again in Canva because Ideogram isn't perfect.

But sometimes they get pretty damn close. 

**Danica Favorite:** I think that's good. I think that's really important and I love the idea that, you were talking about with not paying anymore than you need to, and that business mindset of thinking, okay, how can I do this efficiently and effectively?

You're talking about all the different things. I think that's something that people don't realize is, okay, the cost of an audio book is gonna be $2,000 and you're locked in for all of that time. Whereas there's all of these other options available. When I look at authors who say, oh, I can't afford this, I can't afford that, I'm like, there's gonna be an [00:14:00] option for you. There's something for everyone out there. So I love that you are so creative in figuring out what's gonna work for you for a particular time and for that particular need. 

**Dana Sacco:** I'd rather spend the money on the subscriptions.

So I use Chat GPT, like I said, it was the main one. I now have Open Router, which I use it in conjunction with Novel Crafter because Novel Crafter organizes it the way my brain thinks. It's almost like putting it into folders. I have, Ideogram I do pay for that because I did not want all my images to be public. That was actually my big reason for doing that. It was not necessarily because I got better results, okay, I like to hit the regeneration button like a lot. So I will probably make about 10, 15 different copies of a cover when I do one. 

It's absolutely fun. If I have the subject line or I have like the concept of it, I'll just throw it into whatever. And [00:15:00] it's funny because everyone's like, I don't know how to prompt this stuff. I'm like, I ask Chat GPT how to prompt everything else. 

Businesswise, I use Metricool because I'm not gonna advertise, guys, I'm not doing Facebook ads, I'm not doing Amazon ads. I don't wanna pay them money.

I'd rather pay 29. I think I pay $29 for Metricool a month. And it does all my social media posts on every place that I post. I use Chat GPT to make all my posts. I make 'em Twitter size. The only reason why I do it that way is because I can share that on every other platform.

And I pay for book funnel. I pay for my subscriptions. I pretty much pay for my addiction to the subscriptions that I play with. But it took me to that little next step because I have people that are following me. I have people that are asking when the next book is coming out. I have people that they pre-ordered. Remember, this is only six, eight months into this. The fact that people even read my [00:16:00] books blows my mind. The fact that I have people all over the world listening to my books, and some of them listen, every single book I drop, they don't care what the genre is.

They're listening to every single thing I'm dropping and I'm like, thank you. it's very humbling. I am retired. I don't have to work. So as someone that's doing this, I do not wanna have to pay extra money because I have other things that I could spend it on.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah. When you think about it audiobooks could be very expensive depending on the length of what you're writing. Right? I'm an Audible subscriber. I gave one credit a month. I remember the month when I was just like, I'm gonna download Shogun because it was literally like a day's worth of 24 hours.

Worth of audio. And I was like, I'm gonna get what I want out of this one credit of mine. But one of the things that I like to remind people is that we're authors. A lot of us this is either a second job or we're doing it in retirement, [00:17:00] and it is not something that is bringing in a whole ton of income.

A lot of us got into this because we wanted to tell stories. Not because we wanted to start a business. Right. And then when it comes down to it, authors do not owe other people jobs. Like I do not owe a cover designer a job by paying for covers. I do not owe audiobook talents their income as well.

This is not a charity. This is not a charity, this is a business. Right. So I have to think about the kinds of money that I'm putting out there and what what I'm going to get back for it, because I also have to put food on the table, pay bills, do all those kinds of things. 

So I agree. 

If you're in your retirement and you're doing this because you're having fun and you're making stuff, then please use all of the tools that are at your disposal.

You might as well, right? There are even free options. There's also Google Play. You can upload your books to Google Play, you can make free AI audio [00:18:00] books with that. In fact, that's what I'm gonna be doing soon. 

I wanna see all of these tools being taken advantage of. You don't have to set aside $10,000 to get audio books done. You can use that money to live and to continue on with your business. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. And I think that's important because like, that's something Steph you and I talk about this a lot in terms of, and I think you might even have a class on this you can correct me if I'm wrong, but this idea of bootstrapping your publishing career. We are bootstrapping this podcast. When Steph and I were talking about let's do this podcast we said, okay, cool. Steph had bought something like on App Sumo a couple years ago that she's like, yep, we can use this. I have this tool. I have that tool. Cool. Great. 

I read all the time in various author groups and things like that about, oh, I don't have any money for this. What can I do to make this happen? And I don't have money for that. You get some of the authors saying if you don't have money, you shouldn't be doing it. A lot of the [00:19:00] Anti AI crowd, in my opinion, but I know Steph shares quite a bit of this, is that it is ableist. To be able to say, you shouldn't do this and you should pay all these people and this and that. That's great if you have the resources to do it, but a lot of people don't.

And we have to stop telling people, oh, you're a bad person if you're not paying someone else's mortgage, when you can't afford to pay your own. Like, that's just dumb. 

**Dana Sacco:** It is. It is. And there's so much that you can do that is so inexpensive. Like I mentioned, Metricool, they actually have a free startup thing, and that's how I started.

And then with Mailer Lite is my email program until I hit a certain number of subscribers. I was on the free one, and that was along with Bookfunnel so I didn't need to pay for Mailer Lite and have a book funnel thing. It's still, I would rather put the extra money into the BookFunnel so that they could talk.

The K-lytics report came out on Cozy Fantasy, so I decided I wanted to write one. And that [00:20:00] series is doing oddly very well very quickly without me doing anything. And that's because I uploaded it and I needed a prequel. And in a few days, I had one. I use chat GPT also to analyze K-lytics. It's a lot of information and so I'm like, here, can you take a look at this and tell me based on what you know about me, because we've been talking for two years on this type of style, what's going to be my best options?

I have this rom-com series or these rom-com books that are coming out and they're doing so well. Which is really weird because I haven't advertised them at all. They're not even in my social media marketing yet, because I haven't felt like doing it.

Yeah, 

**Danica Favorite:** I know. I was really surprised when you were telling me about that because it's just like, wait, what? I think that's what's really cool about having something like K-lytics, which is gonna tell you what's selling well and doing and all that. Then taking that report, sticking to Chat GPT and say, how can I work with this? And boom, suddenly [00:21:00] you've got this great selling series with minimal effort. I think that's fantastic. So I, 

**Dana Sacco:** yeah, I didn't expect it to be a series. 

**Danica Favorite:** I 

**Dana Sacco:** know that's, that really irritated me yesterday morning when it became a series.

I did the lead magnet and I really like the two grandmothers that are in it because they're so annoying. They're so. They're so into everyone else's lives. I live in a community where there's a lot of older people than me, and it's really funny because I can totally see some of these people as this. 

The lead magnet, which is all I wanted to do, was lead them into other romcoms that I have out there. I like these ladies so much that I have decided, I was like, can we do this? And ChatGPT is like, yeah, here are five more ideas. So now I have five more books that I need to write and but what I did was I dropped the YouTube video yesterday. I use Metro. Cool. To tell me what times things should drop. I do have Saturday at 10 o'clock in the morning every week, something shows up on YouTube. [00:22:00] Otherwise, I had my Vella going certain days of the week just because I matched my Vella days. And I've stuck with that 'cause there's people that follow it.

**Dana Sacco:** I dropped it yesterday and it's already moving into number one. I can see it progressing that quickly. My number one is some random Christmas thing, Christmas romantic comedy, so that's really weird. That one's actually the number one out of all of them so far. 

I've made mistakes and I think that a lot of people are afraid of making mistakes, but because I didn't pay for it, I'm not really worried about it.

Some of them I've done by chapter. Some books. I would drop a chapter every couple of days and that didn't work. But what I was trying to do is I was trying to get the algorithm for YouTube up. It still didn't work. It did not work for me. It does not mean it will not work for someone else.

**Steph Pajonas:** Oh, it didn't work for me either. That's okay. 

**Dana Sacco:** So maybe that's like one of those things and I don't know. But I'm going into [00:23:00] this as this is what I'm going to do for marketing. My people that are on YouTube are not buying my books, my people that are buying my books or not on YouTube. They're all different people that are buying these books or reading these books. I did not know that you could listen to some of these authors on YouTube. And what's cool is I started from zero. I started from absolutely no people knew who I was, which was almost safer.

I think in some respects because I have a couple books underneath my name but I do use a pen name and I have the pen name for I actually have three, three now. Because I needed to separate 'em in my head, so it was easier to do it that way. The books that I'm writing underneath my name, I'm actually writing for my daughter.

And they're just young adult hallmarky romance books because she said they're always in their twenties. She goes, I'm really tired of 'em because they're all in their twenties and that's not like, and she's 18. And so I have five kids and so I'll deal [00:24:00] with the 18-year-old right now of what she wanted.

But if you take the chance to try something, the worst you can do is fail, which is succeeding 'cause you just didn't do it right. For you or for the book that you're doing it for?

Not all my books get listened to. I get a lot of people that are very mad that one of my books, it's my most popular series. It is a paranormal cozy mystery, but it is not doing as well on YouTube. Because they don't like the AI voice. I couldn't use 11 labs because I couldn't figure out how to do the pronunciation thing. And her name is weird, and they weren't happy with that. So they kept pronouncing it wrong, and I got tired of wasting credits on trying to get the stupid thing to pronounce the name right.

Google Play, you can just highlight the name and tell it how to say it. And it applies it to the whole entire book. 

**Steph Pajonas:** I think you have to actually spell things phonetically.

Yeah. In order to get them done.

**Dana Sacco:** I'm not gonna do that. I'm just, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work I don't wanna do.

I am like [00:25:00] the, I'm probably a very lazy author. I've always been a lazy marketer. Before I retired with my business, one of the phrases I came up with was, stop doing piddly shit. And I think it applies to so many different things. Stop doing the little things that you don't necessarily need to do.

I do not send my books to an editor. I just read through it, I was okay. Sometimes I'll throw 'em to my daughter to see what she thinks, but what's funny is that I'll throw it to her and I'll throw it to my 25-year-old and I'll publish it before she even gets back to me. I'm not really worried about your opinion, but please read it anyway. She won't watch the podcast, so we're okay with that. 

But these type of things, I get some people, they freak out if I tell 'em no, I didn't send it to an editor. I've worked with people as a whale reader, who are like I'm waiting for the book to get back from the editor.

Or they're waiting until a publisher picks them up. And I'm like, but this is such a good book. Learn to self-publish. You don't need to spend X number of dollars to self-publish. Please publish this book and have book two ready, [00:26:00] because I wanna know what's happening next. 

It's sad to me that there's probably a lot of books like that out there because people are afraid to do these things. They're afraid of AI. They're afraid of marketing themselves. But if they could figure out how to do it cheaply or least expensively I should say. 'cause it's not cheap marketing.

**Dana Sacco:** I don't consider any of my marketing cheap. I put my time into building my email list. I put my time into arguing with Chat GPT to come up with the books. I have gotten to the point where I can have it make all my beats, and my beats will come out. And with this new Claude 3.7 holy guacamole, it does 3000 words and they're actually good words.

So it's exciting when things like this happen and it's not as hard as people think.

**Danica Favorite:** And I think that's exciting. Usually we ask people how are you approaching publishing and AI? That's our big question, but that's literally all we've been talking about is this approach. This lazy marketer business [00:27:00] person approach, which I think is fantastic because we do need to see that you can get results.

And not have to do all of the big fancy, expensive things, you can bootstrap it. And to me that's really encouraging, again, hearing from someone who I know is a business person and has come from that background. 

The next question we like to ask people is, what does your workflow with AI look like?

Because you've got some pretty cool things that you do in terms of what your workflow is. 

**Dana Sacco:** So I mentioned that I argue with Chat GPT. And I do, I bought the class about the romance outlines over on Future Fiction Academy. And the prompt is perfect. I edited it some to work for me because I'm not writing anything spicy. Everything I do is closed doors right now.

I come up with the idea first. Then I make my cover. I need the visual of where I'm going with it. Because the visual actually is gonna end [00:28:00] up showing me how it feels at least for me. And that's what I'm hoping the reader sees. 

I honestly talk to any AI that I'm talking to as if I'm working with a toddler. So I take that information and the way novel crafter is it has its little things. It has its characters, the locations, the objects, lore, blah, blah, blah. And I ask Chat GPT for each one of those things and a description of each one.

And it's getting more colorful as it's gone on. Some of the things I'm like, whoa, I never thought about that, but that's really cool. Okay. Then I have it make my outline. And my outline has to be, very specific. I need a summary. I need to know whose point of view it's from, and I need to know the feeling of it. Then I put all of that again into Novel crafter. Again, I'm still working outside of Novel Crafter in Chat GPT and just copying and pasting stuff over.

Or if it's a story that I'm not feeling like writing right now, but I needed to get it out, I'm actually just putting it into a Google [00:29:00] Doc with their cute little tabs. Gosh, these people have finally realized that we like to organize stuff. It's only taking them 30 years.

Then I outline it. Claude actually does my scene beats with a prompt that's already in and I've edited it for how I want it to do it inside of Novel Crafter. As it's writing. I'm working through it in editing, then I take it from there and I put it into Atticus and format it.

Then I ask Chat to write my blurb. And I actually will copy a blurb that I like. Or I've had one that I've liked in the past. Something that made me click. Can we make it fit into this book?

Then I start asking it, what category do you think this should be in for Amazon? What category should it be in for Google Play? What are the keywords? And I ask it specifically, I need searchable keywords for Amazon for this. Are they the best? Probably not because some of are very generic. But some of them can be pretty specific. So that part I'm still working on, but [00:30:00] it does give me my seven and I can go on from there. And I'll put that all in there.

Right now Amazon has glitched me into no pre-orders. So I just publish and go now, and I'm not even stressing about it. 

But then I move it over into Google Play, wait for it to do its thing. Then once I run it through to create the audio file, I deactivate it from Google Play because my books are in Kindle Unlimited, but you have to wait. Then I upload it to YouTube. Now I do go back and I go back to my original cover, the closest one inside of Ideogram, which is where I make 99.9% of my covers.

I'll go back, I'll find it, I'll make my YouTube cover. And all I do with that prompt is change it from being a rom-com book cover to a romcom, YouTube thumbnail. Everything else is the same. Shockingly, I get something very close to what I asked for at the beginning. And sometimes I get something totally different, but it works because it's better for YouTube.

Sometimes [00:31:00] then I decide to market the book. I do try to email my email list once a week and I let 'em know what I've released this past week or if I have anything that's coming up that some of them will want to know about.

And that's pretty much it. I try to schedule all my YouTubes on Saturdays at 10 o'clock in the morning. The serial ones go out on Tuesday and Thursday. That's only because that's how I was writing 'em. And then Wednesdays I occasionally drop something because it's in the middle. And then I dropped the one yesterday 'cause I was in the mood to. 

Uploading is now taking me the longest. But it is what it is. These books , they're two hours in audio. Two hours is like the lowest. And that makes the file to upload even larger. So, I'm already at the point that I have thumb drives because I'm out of room on my laptop.

**Dana Sacco:** But that's about it. There's not anything special with it. There's nothing, anything that is proprietary. Oh my gosh. No. I sit down [00:32:00] and I click the buttons until I get what I want. 

**Steph Pajonas:** You're leveraging all of the tools at your disposal, and some of them are free.

Mm-hmm. And some of them you pay for. Right. I also use the top tier Ideogram. So that all of my images are also private. And the same thing with Midjourney. 

And then there are other things that I'm just not willing to pay for. So I totally get it because you're the one who's doing all of the work, so you've gotta find the things that you like to work with, that you're comfortable with, that make it, make your life easier. And that's what AI is here for.

It's here to make our lives easier. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, like going back to, what Dana was saying about. Like her process not being anything special or whatever, or proprietary. And that's why I think I wanted Dana was because this really is something that you can make your own and do what works for you.

And I love the detail because I think a lot of people ask us all the time, what is the detail of this workflow [00:33:00] and the process, and yours is so simple that people can just go out and once again bootstrap it and do the things that work for them. 

Use those free versions where they feel like a paid version makes sense for them.

They can use that as well. And I think that's really important for people to understand that this doesn't have to be a big production. What I appreciate about you and seriously talking to you has even further convinced me that I am just gonna do this on a few of my projects is that this idea of not allowing your ego, to get in there. I have some books on my hard drive from my early days of writing that I always have said, oh, it's never gonna see the light of day.

And now I'm like, I'm just gonna run it through AI, see what it needs to fix and put those suckers up there. Because, who cares? Like I care. But that need to have the ego involved is like, I just [00:34:00] maybe it's that now I am kind of at this. I'm too old for this.

**Dana Sacco:** There, there's a book and I honestly haven't read it and I do have it. And it's the subtle art of not giving f. I like it. It's actually sitting on my coffee table just so that I can see the words. I've honestly never even opened the book. 

**Danica Favorite:** Oh, that's great. 

**Dana Sacco:** Because it got here right at a bad time and I was just like, I'm not dealing with this.

But I love the title and it makes such a difference. Even when I started, we all look at the reviews, we look at the stars and everything else. I'm like, God dang. I'm like, that really sucked. But then I have someone else that loved it. So, I have one book in the middle of the series that it has three stars and all the rest of 'em have four and a half.

I'm like, what the heck? And pay attention to that. They're four and a half stars, and they were all AI done. And so it was my idea. It's still my book. It's still my characters. It's my escape, and that's how I view it. My husband actually says it the best. He won't watch [00:35:00] the podcast either, so he won't know.

I said that that you are writing to help people escape from whatever they're dealing with at this moment. You're writing so that you can escape for that moment because you need to escape somewhere.

And it's true as authors in general, and I'll say this as both, someone who's writing, as someone who's reading, I'm reading your books because I don't wanna be in the here and now, right now for an hour, for 10 minutes. I go to a doctor's appointment and we all sit at a doctor's waiting room for God knows how long, and I don't wanna be there.

So I'd much rather escape into some, fantasy world where dragons are and whatever. People still amaze me at the worlds that they're creating and I'm being told the same thing as an author just randomly from random people around the world, that they absolutely love this world that I've created.

And it's like, whoa, okay. That's, it's humbling. But if we write, not for monetary reasons solely, [00:36:00] we like the money that comes in. We won't discuss how many times I refresh my screen to see, how many YouTube subscribers or did someone read five more pages of my books.

But if we take that aspect a little bit out of it and just remember that we're writing to have someone else have an escape for a moment, We're blessed with that ability. 

**Danica Favorite:** I think that's beautiful. And it's important because, you said earlier in the interview you were talking about how 90% of what you do is AI, but the thing is this is still all Dana.

I love that you argue with the AI and you're still putting all of these things that are you and your escapism and the things that are important to you. That's still 100% Dana. And so even though the AI is doing 90% of the heavy lifting, it's because Dana put herself into that book and I think that's really a good reminder [00:37:00] for everyone listening. If they're afraid of being out there with their AI. Just stop. Because it is you, it is that essence of who you are and what you're contributing to the world. I think ultimately at the end of the day, it is who you are.

And expressing yourself and using whatever tools are available to do that. I find it so inspiring that you're sharing that with us today. 

**Dana Sacco:** Thank you. I think one of my favorite comments on YouTube was actually a negative comment telling me that there was too much sarcasm in my book.

And I really wanted to say you and I would not get along because the character is me. She is so me, and I'm like, yeah, we're just not gonna get along. You can go listen to this book because it's just sweet and fluffy and whatever. I said, but this one, no, this one's just not gonna happen for you.

**Danica Favorite:** So the final question we usually ask people when we're wrapping up, but you gave us such a great list of AI tools. I'm not sure [00:38:00] what a good answer is gonna be to that, but out of all the tools you gave us, is there a favorite that you can pick out? 

**Dana Sacco:** Ideogram is probably one of my favorite just because I absolutely love hitting regenerate. Chat GPT is probably the one. Chat is probably my favorite because I've used it for so many things.

My stuff is saved from two years ago, and you look at the progression from where it has been and where it is now. But like I said, I use it from everything from planning my groceries to please figure out what the heck I can make with this piece of chicken in in my refrigerator, to, I need another character in this book.

One of my books is now gonna have a goat. We don't know what the goat's gonna do, but the goat's in another book. And I was like, I need a goat in this book. And so, somehow I've gotta fit a goat into this book. I'll figure out how later. 

**Danica Favorite:** I have some ideas.

**Dana Sacco:** I'm not sure how I'm gonna put goat in, but we will figure it out. So yeah, I think Chat would probably be the number one [00:39:00] that I use. 

**Danica Favorite:** Thank you for being here with us today. Obviously we talk about this stuff all day long anyway among us. But I love that the audience generally is gonna get to hear this because there's so much great wisdom here and I'm really excited for them to get to experience this and realize that they don't have to be perfect at everything or know all of the stuff. They can just go out and be writers and there's really beauty and joy in that.

So thank you again for being here today. 

**Dana Sacco:** Absolutely. Thank you for having me. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, go out and be writers. Go out and figure out how you're gonna reach your audience and you can bootstrap it along the way. Find all the free tools and the mostly free tools that you can use. There are definitely a few out there that you can just pay a few dollars every now and then for like a month, and then you can bang on it and you can let that subscription lapse and then come back to it later, which is one of the beautiful things that we [00:40:00] now have at our disposal. 

I love the fact that you've been thinking outside of the box for your business. You've definitely been trying out new genres, trying out different things and seeing what works for you. And then the things that you don't work, you just say, eh, I'm not gonna do them anymore. And the things that you do love and do work you just double down on and figure that you wanna try it and keep it going.

**Dana Sacco:** Absolutely. It's all about your mood. 

**Steph Pajonas:** It's all about your mood. And with that, I think we're done for today. Thank you so much for coming and talking with us about this subject, because I think it's really important for people to see that you can go from zero not doing much of anything to author and no time whatsoever, especially with these tools.

So I think it's important. 

All right, so everybody, if you wanna come by and check out some of the stuff that Dana talked about on today's episode, come to brave new bookshelf.com. Read the story notes and the blog post that we'll put together for this episode, and we'll have all of her great [00:41:00] little bits of wisdom and the links and all that kind of stuff.

And also if you're gonna be in New Orleans at the Writer MBA conference. We'd love to see you, Danica and I will be there. And we're looking forward to, having some fun and learning some new things. Danica, do you have anything else you wanna say before we go?

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah just remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, our Facebook page, all of that good stuff. Like I said, give Publish Drive a little extra love. Make sure that you're following us. For those of you who don't know and are listening on one area and are like, Hey I really wanna get this on this other podcast network.

We are on all the major podcast networks, so don't feel like you have to stick to one. Do what works for you because that's what we're here for. 

And also. Make sure if you have a question or a topic you want us to talk about, please be sure to let us know that as well. Leave comments on YouTube, Facebook, whatever, because we [00:42:00] really do want to try to make sure we are serving our audience. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Absolutely All right, great. All right, so from me and Danica and Dana, we're gonna say goodbye and we'll see you again in another episode very soon. Okay. Bye. 

Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us@bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.